this post was submitted on 08 Aug 2024
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Data Is Beautiful

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[–] DirkMcCallahan@lemmy.world 84 points 4 months ago (5 children)

c/dataishorrifyinganddepressing

[–] friend_of_satan@lemmy.world 16 points 4 months ago

Seriously! I had no idea so few people voted.

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[–] SatansMaggotyCumFart@lemmy.world 44 points 4 months ago (14 children)

The government should partner with McDonald’s and offer a free double cheeseburger with proof of voting.

[–] ChicoSuave@lemmy.world 26 points 4 months ago (5 children)

Election Day should be a national holiday to give folks a chance to vote.

[–] toastal@lemmy.ml 8 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Pay for postage for mail-in voters.

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[–] ironhydroxide@sh.itjust.works 20 points 4 months ago (1 children)

The government should pass a law that it's required to vote, or give a reasonable explanation why you can't. Employers are punished for keeping their employees from voting.

[–] metaStatic@kbin.earth 24 points 4 months ago

Hi, it's me, Australia, you might remember me from such democratic innovations as the secret ballot and mandatory voting, America will never have mandatory voting because it works about as well as gun control, single payer health care, and the metric system.

Also many places have mandatory voting but very few enforce it, I would put money on America being one of those places if it somehow got a foothold.

[–] Hello_there@fedia.io 11 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Its actually illegal to do this. Yes, that's stupid.

[–] Ioughttamow@kbin.run 12 points 4 months ago

It should be whiskey like the founders intended

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[–] fermionsnotbosons@lemmy.ml 43 points 4 months ago

I would also like to see a similar graph for mid-term elections. Do the winners even get 10% of the eligible votes?

[–] rarWars@lemmy.blahaj.zone 34 points 4 months ago (4 children)

The percentages for 2016 only add up to 97, and the 40% bar is longer than the 41% of 2012.

[–] Klaymore@sh.itjust.works 19 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

Maybe 3% voted for a third party, and because they aren't shown the other bars were expanded to fill the entire space

[–] rarWars@lemmy.blahaj.zone 10 points 4 months ago (1 children)

They could've done a little green sliver like they did for 1980.

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[–] Vlixz@lemmy.world 30 points 4 months ago (4 children)

Maybe a really dumb question and I'm not from the US but why did Hilary lose in 2016 when she had more votes than Donald Trump? That doesn't really make any sense to me

[–] LMagicalus@discuss.tchncs.de 49 points 4 months ago (4 children)

Because we have this stupid thing called the electoral college. Basically, each state has a certain number of votes, based (roughly) on population (its a whole other issue), and the states' votes are cast for whoever won the most votes within their state (barring rogue electors and the few states that use proportional representation for votes.) Theres a total of 538 votes, and all that matters is winning more than half of them. This has made the winner of the popular vote lose the election 5 times (though in 1824, it went to the house of representatives for a final decision because no one had a majority.)

To summarize: not a dumb question, VERY dumb answer.

[–] Michal@programming.dev 18 points 4 months ago (1 children)

It's funny that even even if the weight was distributed equally by population (it isn't), it's not based on number of people voted. so, in theory if only one person votes, their vote still has the same weight as the whole state.

That's my understanding anyway.

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[–] AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world 7 points 4 months ago

Also to clarify further, the founding fathers created the EC specifically to override the popular vote, because they were afraid that land owning men might be too poorly educated to actually make decisions about our "democracy."

Really let that sink in. They probably would have opposed the expansion of voting rights to anybody.

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[–] Michal@programming.dev 11 points 4 months ago

Because in the US democracy every vote is equal, but some are more equal than others.

[–] barsquid@lemmy.world 8 points 4 months ago

We were supposed to be a representative democracy with one rep for every 33,000 Americans. When voting for president each state gets one vote per rep and one for each of their two senators.

A while back some assholes decided that 33,000 is too representative and we should have a fixed number instead. So now it turns out that Wyoming should get one rep for every 58,000 Americans so their votes are worth far more than a Californian's.

[–] captainlezbian@lemmy.world 7 points 4 months ago

People don’t vote, states vote. Semi proportionally to number of people, but it isn’t linear. This means that California gets 50 some odd votes and they all go to the democrats most of the time but Wyoming gets 3 (the minimum) despite it being smaller than many cities in population and they all go to the republicans basically every time. That’s why swing states are a thing that exists and matters. Back in the 00s Florida and Ohio were in the sweet spot of big and could go either way (insert joke about my girlfriend) but now they’re both considered firmly Republican states, meanwhile Wisconsin lost its Republican status and now swings as did Arizona. When people talk about texas possibly becoming a swing state as a big deal this is why, it doesn’t matter who gets the popular vote, texas is so big and serves as a counterweight to California and New York for the republicans that if the democrats win Texas without the republicans picking up several states that they never get, all of the swing states, or one of the two big hitters of the Dems then there’s basically no chance for them to win.

[–] MacStache@programming.dev 30 points 4 months ago (3 children)

I've never understood why there is a voting system where the one with most votes can lose.

[–] meeeeetch@lemmy.world 20 points 4 months ago (2 children)

They usually justify it by saying it's to prevent the tyranny of the majority (two wolves and a sheep biting on dinner).

But a case could be made that it's a way to keep the elite entrenched.

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[–] Triasha@lemmy.world 10 points 4 months ago (1 children)

The founders were a gentleman's club. Which is basically a fraternity. They made up rules that made sense to a bunch of frat boy farmers with enlightenment libraries.

[–] captainlezbian@lemmy.world 10 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I wouldn’t call them farmers. Partly because a variety of wealthy professions were represented and mostly because the ones who called themselves farmers didn’t do any farming, they forced enslaved people to farm for them.

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[–] CableMonster@lemmy.ml 7 points 4 months ago

It was a compromise so the smaller states were willing to join the United States. Same reason there are two senators for each state.

[–] Trainguyrom@reddthat.com 24 points 4 months ago (4 children)

Also worth noting: Republicans have only once won the popular vote since the turn of this century, in 2004 for George W. Bush's reelection, when he had both the incumbent advantage and was still riding the post-9/11 patriotism wave

or put another way, the democratic candidate have won the popular vote on 5/6 presidential elections this century

[–] mindbleach@sh.itjust.works 9 points 4 months ago

when he had both the incumbent advantage and was still riding the post-9/11 patriotism wave

And slandering John Kerry, actual veteran and protestor, with "swiftboating" horseshit.

W's media goons were some of the slimiest motherfuckers ever to darken Washington's marble halls.

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[–] Gingerlegs@lemmy.world 19 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Only a 7% increase after that nightmare.

[–] mozz@mbin.grits.dev 16 points 4 months ago

7% is enough to swing any election in history (the part of it that is shown on the chart)

[–] stalfoss@lemm.ee 8 points 4 months ago

I think even more horrifying is that more people voted for Trump in 2020 than in 2016

[–] BilboBargains@lemmy.world 13 points 4 months ago (1 children)

That orange party sure does win a lot of elections.

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[–] ownsauce@lemmy.world 12 points 4 months ago (6 children)

Should split this out by electoral college votes/states where the 'did not vote' could actually have made a difference. This is great info but also a bit misleading cause votes in swing states have more of an effect than increasing votes in deeply blue or deeply red states. The US president is not selected by a national popular vote. See on the chart how W Bush won the election but Gore had the popular vote, due to how the electoral college works.

Not discounting that more people should vote. I wish there were a national holiday in the US for everyone to get out and vote. But some votes matter more than others, depending on where you live, and this chart misses that nuance.

[–] lepinkainen@lemmy.world 10 points 4 months ago (1 children)

There is a map like that out there, if I remember correctly like 40+ states had “did not vote” win…

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[–] glizzard@lemmy.ca 12 points 4 months ago

This makes me kinda ill. Like I almost cried a bit looking over these numbers. And I’ve seen some shit.

[–] JCreazy@midwest.social 10 points 4 months ago (3 children)

There should be a tax incentive for voting or something

[–] Zagorath@aussie.zone 31 points 4 months ago (7 children)

Step 1: make voting compulsory

Step 2: move it to a weekend

Step 3: easy access to prepoll or postal voting for people who can't make it on the official day

Bonus step: change voting system to IRV, or even better, to something proportional like MMP or STV

There you go. America has a functioning electoral system.

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[–] earmuff@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Quick reminder: In Switzerland, we have the ability to vote on everything. We get educated like that from the early childhood on, that voting is important and necessary. Even with that concept, the average voter participation is between 40-50%. So even if you might think a lot of people are not voting - yes, true, but you will never be able to increase it much above 50% IMHO.

[–] Focal@pawb.social 21 points 4 months ago (1 children)

In norway, the lowest voter turnout we've ever had is 75.4%

[–] earmuff@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 4 months ago (7 children)

Fuck me, that’s awesome. Then Switzerland and the US are clearly doing something wrong. What is the average voter participation in Norway and how often can people vote?

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[–] khannie@lemmy.world 7 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Australia has mandatory voting which is an interesting one. Quick search tells me the last turnout was nearly 90%.

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